Item: Spotfire
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Spotfire is used extensively to do both (1) dashboards of a broad range of challenges (safety, volume and cost performance) as well as (2) large database analysis.
It addresses the problems of
(1) Reporting complex data quickly and consistently
(2) Enabling fluid report changes, as required, without recreating data searches
(3) An analysis bench for large data sets that would be inefficient or impossible in spreadsheeting programs
(4) Bringing together multiple sources of data for better understanding of organization performance.

Pros and Cons

Beautiful plots
Ease of building and modifying visual representations
Linking plot data to visual presentations to enable deep diving
Bringing together disparate sources of data

Fault finding data queries with more informative error reporting to improve query coding (particularly database related). This often means having to form queries in external programs, such as SQL Server, to fault find and optimize the query
Transparent data cleaning. A lot of Spotfire developers have been observed to use filters and other data cleaning that is not visible to Spotfire general users which can deliver inappropriate analysis because the data is cleaned incorrectly
Opportunities to improve query performance. Spotfire does not provide guidance to new users on how to improve the speed of the dashboard or provide opportunities to expand/ contract data ranges of interest to improve speed
IronPython does not have sufficient support. Need to improve learning of ironpython, possibly with a tutorial and better alignment to Python and/or R.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau Desktop

Spotfire has better presentation and more intuitive interface for dashboard development than Tableau.
Tableau has better data cleaning, a transparent interface, and better availability for academic use than Spotfire.

Return on Investment

Positive - improved clarity of financial and production performance
Positive - improved ability to interrogate HSE information

Training Types Used

Online training

Some insight into Spotfire capabilities but I have learnt more about the product through self-taught methods than I did through the formal training.

Integrations with other TIBCO products

No. Not that I am aware.

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 Business

Likelihood to Recommend

Spotfire is excellent for delivering reports of data so the end-user can spend more time on data analysis and interpretation and less time on data gathering. It has sufficient capabilities to be able to evolve as the user gains an understanding of the data and explore further opportunities form the data. Spotfire, at this stage, has limitations in the maximum volume of data it can handle and does not do well to guide the general user in optimizing the data retrieval and cleaning that would facilitate better presentation speed. It is not yet well integrated into standard reporting tools. Microsoft Powerpoint and Word, for example, would allow it to replace Excel as a data analysis tool.

Spotfire: a great product to get out of the Excel RUT!

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with TIBCO Spotfire